merb_exceptions

A simple Merb plugin to ease exception notifications.

The notifier currently supports two interfaces, Email Alerts and Web Hooks. Emails are formatted as plain text and sent using your Merb environment's mail settings. Web hooks as sent as post requests.

Instead of a messy port of a rails plugin this is a complete rewrite from scratch and so is able to take full advantage of Merb's exception handling functionality.

Getting Going

Once you have the Gem installed you will need to add it as a dependency in your projects init.rb file

dependency 'merb_exceptions'

Configuration goes in config/plugins.yml file (which you may need to create). See 'Settings' below for a full description of the options.

:exceptions:
  :app_name: My App Name
  :email_from: [email protected]
  :web_hooks: http://localhost:4000/exceptions
  :email_addresses: 
  - [email protected]
  - [email protected]
:environments:
  - staging
  - production

The plugin doesn't modify any existing code or do anything particularly magical so you will need to explicitly include it. Just include this module in your ExceptionsController.

include MerbExceptions::ControllerExtensions

If you have specified any email addresses and are not already requiring merb-mailer then you need to do so. It also needs configuration.

dependency 'merb-mailer'

Settings

web_hooks, email_addresses, and environments can either be a single string or an array of strings.

app_name: Used to customise emails (default "My App")

email_from: Exceptions are sent from this address

web_hooks: Each url is sent a post request. See 'Web Hooks' for more info.

email_addresses: Each email address is sent an exception notification using Merb's built in mailer settings.

environments: Notifications will only be sent for environments in this list, defaults to production

Advanced usage

Including MerbExceptions::ControllerExtensions creates an internal_server_error action which renders the default exception page and delivers the exception. If you need to rescue any other exceptions or customize the behavior in any way you can write your own actions in ExceptionsController and make a call to render_and_notify.

For example to be notified of 404's:

def not_found
  render_and_notify :format => :html
end

render_and_notify - passes any provided options directly to Merb's render method and then sends the notification after rendering.

notify_of_exceptions - if you need to handle the render yourself for some reason then you can call this method directly. It sends notifications without any rendering logic. Note though that if you are sending lots of notifications this could delay sending a response back to the user so try to avoid using it where possible.

Web hooks

Web hooks are a great way to push your data beyond your app to the outside world. For each address on your web_hooks list we will send a HTTP:POST request with the following parameters for you to consume.

request_url
request_controller
request_action
request_params
request_status_code
exception_name
exception_message
exception_backtrace
merb_exception_class
original_exception_class
environment

Requirements

Edge Merb

Install

Install gem from github

sudo gem install newbamboo-merb_exceptions --source=http://gems.github.com

or install from source with

rake install_gem

Licence

(The MIT License)

Permission is hereby granted, free of charge, to any person obtaining a copy of this software and associated documentation files (the 'Software'), to deal in the Software without restriction, including without limitation the rights to use, copy, modify, merge, publish, distribute, sublicense, and/or sell copies of the Software, and to permit persons to whom the Software is furnished to do so, subject to the following conditions:

The above copyright notice and this permission notice shall be included in all copies or substantial portions of the Software.

THE SOFTWARE IS PROVIDED 'AS IS', WITHOUT WARRANTY OF ANY KIND, EXPRESS OR IMPLIED, INCLUDING BUT NOT LIMITED TO THE WARRANTIES OF MERCHANTABILITY, FITNESS FOR A PARTICULAR PURPOSE AND NONINFRINGEMENT. IN NO EVENT SHALL THE AUTHORS OR COPYRIGHT HOLDERS BE LIABLE FOR ANY CLAIM, DAMAGES OR OTHER LIABILITY, WHETHER IN AN ACTION OF CONTRACT, TORT OR OTHERWISE, ARISING FROM, OUT OF OR IN CONNECTION WITH THE SOFTWARE OR THE USE OR OTHER DEALINGS IN THE SOFTWARE.